


Happy Endings

by Kauri



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Red Hawke, breaking canon and fixing it, but fluff, minor blood, no smut I feel ashamed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-18 23:22:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16128830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kauri/pseuds/Kauri
Summary: A circle mage may have many things, but not love.





	Happy Endings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hobbitdragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbitdragon/gifts).



“You’re dead,” says a voice from the doorway.

Orsino takes a shallow breath, looking up, fingers clenching uselessly in the thin blanket flung across the bed where he lays. “Am I?” There is no challenge, only a weary resignation.

Only relief.

Hawke leans against the doorframe, silhouette blocking out most of the light filtering into the dim room. He’s dressed in his Champion’s armor, red leather head-to-toe, and all over buckles and blood, and pointy, dangerous bits. The humorous edge in his voice is dangerous too. “Oh yes, I was there.” He steps into the tiny room, weaving around the detritus of Orsino’s life and his sudden, present squalor –– broken vials, trampled spellbooks, and damp straw from the torn mattress going slowly to rot. Hawke frowns, and kicks at a tangle of ruined robes on the floor. “Varric was too.”

“Do I even _want_ to know?”

Hawke hesitates, which is alarming enough by itself, the Champion is a man of action, always. “You transformed yourself into a Harvester.”

Orsino flinches.

“Killed seven Templars before being put down,” He continues gruffly, starting to pace around the tiny room, full of a strange, jerky sort of energy. “I struck the killing blow myself.” Hawke’s fingers drum against the ornate hilts of the daggers strapped to his hips, a tiny expression of unease. It was always so whenever Hawke was forced to deal with Knight-Commander Meredith –– all dark smiles and jibes, and restless fingertips. The gesture is so familiar it is a strange sort of comfort. Hawke makes a strangled, humorless sound in the shape of a laugh. “No one who has ever spent more than three seconds it your company will ever believe it. But everyone else…”

“Will _want_ it to be true.” Orsino closes his eyes. _“The irony.”_

“You are First Enchanter. They’d need a – a corpse or ––" Hawke stops pacing and grits his teeth. "They would account for you otherwise.”

Orsino doesn’t miss the wide berth Hawke gives to the word _corpse_. Not a true stutter, but a faltering of breath. He looks up.

Hawke grunts, still frowning. “There is talk of bringing in the Templars from Starkhaven to… clean up. They’ve no mages of their own to tend, and Kirkwall… I will not risk –– It is what I could do to keep you _safe."_  He tips his jaw upwards, a tiny expression of obstinance."I _refuse_ to be sorry for that.”

There is a long pause, but it is not silent. There will be no silence in Kirkwall for some time yet. Even now sounds of unrest seep through the decaying walls of the tiny hovel. Dark town is protected in it’s own way from the chaos of the world above, but nowhere in Kirkwall can be safe for very long. Not anymore.

Hawke glances up. “Do you mind very much?” The question is asked with such ridiculous lightness –– as though Hawke had just noticed there was no honey alongside the afternoon tea.

But the tips of his fingers flutter restlessly.

Orsino looks away, so Hawke will not see the conflict shiver across his face –– truth warring with diplomatic caution, always. He wonders if he will ever again speak his mind without forethought.  “A circle mage may have many things. But not pride.”

“You’re not a circle mage any more.” Hawke insists gruffly, coming to stand beside the bed.

“I am not,” Orsino agrees mildly. “Thank you for that.” The last is so quiet it is little more than a ragged whisper.

Guilt flares in Hawke’s eyes.

_Ah._

“It was _not_ meant like that. I do not _blame you,_ Hawke.” He reaches over for Hawke’s hand, and tries not to flinch when Hawke moves to avoid his touch.

He manages.

Nearly.

“No? _I do.”_ Hawke makes a frustrated sound and tugs a hand through his hair. “Kirkwall is burning to the ground as we speak. Nine of every ten mages are dead, or will be by morning. _This_ is _not_ what I promised you.” Hawke’s fingertip aren’t fluttering anymore. He’s well beyond that. They grip the hilts of his daggers as though struggling not to draw them.

“You promised to stand with us, Hawke. _You did that.”_

“I would not have had to if Anders –– if _I_ had not seen what was happening until too late, _damnit!”_ His temper flares and he lashes out, thumping his mailed fist furiously on the small bedside table which immediately surrenders in the face of Hawke's wrath, and explodes in a cascade of half-rotten splinters.

 _“Shit,"_ Hawke makes a small sound of shocked dismay."Sorry."

“It was an ugly table anyhow,” Orsino says. In spite of everything he can feel the corner of his mouth twitch upwards. But then, Hawke could always make him smile.

“Small mercies,” Hawke sighs, looking around. “I should have found you a better place. _Cleaner_ at least. Maker, you deserve so much more.” For an instant it looks as though Hawke will touch him. But he doesn’t.

“I think it extraordinary that you thought to find any place at all.” Orsino says quietly.

A beat of embarrassed silence, and Hawke turns back towards the bed. “You know… this is the first time we’ve ever been completely alone.”

“Bit excessive don’t you think? Blow up the chantry. Destroy the circles. All so you and I can have a private chat?”

The corner of Hawke’s mouth twitches upwards. It is not a smile, not _quite._ But it is close. “Worth it.”

Orsino’s heart thuds heavily.

He remembers the first time he met Hawke. He had heard of him, naturally. Everyone whispered about the newly minted Champion of Kirkwall. Rumor said he was fantastically handsome –– and unpredictable, and terrifying –– but Orsino had still been underprepared the first time Garrett Hawke had strode into his life. No one walked easy in such a place, but _Hawke_ had walked into the Gallows as though it was _his ––_ as the whole of Kirkwall was his –– asking no one’s permission before quietly setting things to right.

_Breathtaking._

Their encounters had always been brief. Hawke, blowing in and out of his office like a burly, bearded hurricane –– leaving a trail of debris, but never lingering. And Orsino, standing at the eye of the storm, surrounded by chaos, but always untouched.

He cannot remember what shifted, only that Hawke began to linger, and _he_ began to live for those brief, unexpected encounters –– the shape of Hawke’s shadow in the doorway, the low-pitched chuckle, the wry humor heavy with innuendo, the heated glances….

But attraction is such a fragile thing to survive failure, and ruin, and death.

And nothing is as it was.

Orsino closes his eyes. He does not know what becomes of young Champions whose cities are burnt to ash. But he knows what happens to old fools with hopeless crushes.

He will watch Hawke blow out of his life, eventually.

“What happens now?” Orsino asks quietly.

Hawke hesitates. And if it didn’t scare him before, it does now. “I don’t know.”

“Will you leave Kirkwall?”

“No. Not without ––” Hawke’s eyes cut towards him, then away. _“Not yet.”_ He clears his throat. “Do _you_ want to leave Kirkwall?”

_Does he?_

“I… I...” Orsino blinks, feeling foolish. “I am… not used to people asking me what I want.”

Something dark moves behind Hawke’s eyes. “That will change. You can have whatever you want now.”

_What I want..._

“Hawke,” Orsino says automatically, flushing when Hawke crouches beside the bed so they are nearly at eye-level. “Hawke, what do you want?”

This time here is only a heartbeat of hesitation before Hawke lunges forward, and covers Orsino’s mouth with his own.

They have only ever kissed once before. A hasty, unexpected thing. Barely a kiss, though it had electrified him from the backs of his knees, to the tips of his fingers. It is much the same now. Urgent. Inelegant. Bristly where they touch. Hawke tastes like the lingering astringency of health potions, and little else, yet Orsino feels electric bolts of desire go pinging through him with an alarming intensity.

(There is still terror there too. Lingering beneath the surface of Orsino's skin. He has never felt desire without fear. Has ever been aware that anything he loved would be taken from him. No matter Hawke's nobility, and favor with the Viscount, he knew Meredith would turn on him in an instant if she knew he was what Orsino desired. As a reminder, if nothing else, as a lesson he ought to have learned long ago. A Circle Mage cannot covet.)

Hawke cups Orsino’s cheek as he kisses him, thumb gently tracing a semi-circle against his jaw. The other hand curls at the back of his neck, before sliding down his spine, and across his back, and over his ––

He pulls back suddenly with sharp pained sound.

Hawke goes absolutely rigid. _“Orsino?”_

“It's–– I'm alright. I am.” He leans in for another kiss –– a man must have his priorities in order, after all –– but Hawke pulls away, and off the bed entirely.

 _“Orsino.”_ It's a flatter sound now, his name. Edged with anger. Hawke flips the edge of the blanket down and the flush of his face darkens abruptly. “You’re still _bleeding?!”_

“Not much anymore. You’re one to talk, Hawke. There’s more blood on _you_ than––”

“Yes, but none of it is _mine.”_ Hawke jerks the blanket down the rest of the way, and Orsino is suddenly, painfully, _embarrassingly_ aware of how he looks, and who he is –– a ragged apostate on the edge of decline. Naked, and pale, all lean muscle evaporated into simple _leanness_ by the ordeals of the Gallows. He is halfway towards gaunt, and knows it. But Hawke seems to have eyes only for the blood-spotted bandages wound hastily around his chest, which is...  _hardly flattering._

(Not that he expected the Champion to be overcome with lust at the mere sight of his naked body.)

(But a man _can_ dream.)

Hawke gingerly lifts the edge of one of the bandages, finds it sticky with blood and makes a deeply offended sound.

Orsino, face flaming snatches the blanked back into place preserving the last inch –– well, the last six inches or so –– of his dignity.

“Why didn't you _tell_ me?”

“It is, frankly, _none of your affair.”_ Orsino says, more prickly than he ought to be.

Hawke grunts noncommittally, and pokes him. “Move over.”

Orsino bristles. “I'll not be bullied by you.”

“I'm not bullying. I'm _asking.”_ Hawke says, not sounding like it at all. But he take a deep, measuring breath through his nose. _“Please_ move over so I can ensure you’re not _bleeding to death,_ you stubborn, ungrateful ––”

 _“Fine.”_ Orsino snaps. He shifts on the narrow bed, trying to make room for Hawke, an impressively, unreasonably, _large man._ They bump awkwardly against each other, and Orsino is keenly aware of every square inch of his own exposed skin and the way it tingles wherever Hawke touches him.

“Shit,” Hawke complains, “you’re _freezing._ How much of your mana did you use?”

“Enough,” Orsino says tersely.

In truth he remembers little of the finale of the battle. He’d been furious, and reckless with it, loosing wilder, more unrestrained magic as the world around him unraveled, until he’d wreathed the entire Gallows in lightning. He’d seen Hawke only briefly after that, a berserk smear of red darting around blades and spells alike. _There,_ and then _gone._ Blood on his hands, and violence in his eyes, and a trail of fallen foes in his wake.

Orsino had been nearly insensate by the time one of Hawke's companions –– the Rivani woman called Isabela –– had brought him here. Reeling, and so low on mana the veins in his arms felt like they'd collapsed. Someone had brought him water, and bread, and of all wonders, a mana potion, which had stopped him from dying –– or feeling like it. Still, it had taken hours for the shaking to subside. Hours longer for his strength to return.

Hawke unwinds the bandages silently. Or nearly silently. He makes series of annoyed and deeply disapproving sounds from the vicinity of Orsino's shoulder.

“Well?”

“Someone stabbed you,” Hawke says mildly.

“Only a little.” Orsino tries to twist around to see, but Hawke hisses at him, and presses on his shoulder to keep him still.

“Your ribs blocked the blow –– you’d be dead otherwise. Hurts to breathe?”

“Only a little.”

Hawke makes a rude sound, and starts to pull off the sharpest bits of his armor, piece by piece, chucking each item carelessly over the side of the bed as he goes. It is slow, this unwrapping of a Champion, there are so many straps and buckles, and Orsino wonders how Hawke will ever get back into it all again.

He watches with hooded eyes as Hawke wriggles out of his shirt –– the Champion is, if possible even _more_ magnificent _out_ of his armor, than in –– and uses his teeth to tear the garment into strips. Several strips he discards as too filthy for use, but one that passes inspection he folds, wetting it with a bit of something from a silver flask he carries in his boot.

“This will sting,” he warns.

It does. Orsino makes a sound he can’t quite keep clenched between his teeth as the alcohol burns straight into the torn flesh. “W-what–– what is that?” He asks in a shaky voice.

“Very very good Navarran whiskey.” Hawke grumbles. “Just a bit more.”

Orsino tries to make an agreeable sound as Hawke re-applies the whiskey-soaked cloth. But judging by Hawke’s expression, he fails. To distract himself as Hawke tends to him, Orsino allows his fingers to wander over Hawke’s skin, familiarizing himself with the shifting muscles of his forearms and the scars that wind up one side of him like tree branches in the wind. This close Orsino can see a tiny sliver of silver in Hawke’s beard, and runs his thumb over it, covetously. The hair on Hawke’s chest is curlier, a thick tangle of hair that grows from his collarbones to his belly, thickening below his navel to a sharp clear line that leads down to his ––

Orsino clears his throat, flushing, and looks up.

Hawke is breathing heavily, eyes dark with arousal. “I will find you someplace far away from this city where you can be safe,” he promises quietly. “I… I swear I will.”

“Hawke…”

“I cannot be what you need.” He says quietly, closing his eyes. “Once… perhaps. But now… It would be better… I’ll find you a place, and then I’ll –– I’m a violent man, Orsino.”

“I am quite practiced at keeping violent men in check.” Orsino says quietly.

Indecision shivers across Hawke’s face.

“You asked me what I wanted…” Orsino insists. “It’s ––”

Hawke tips Orsino forward and kisses him. It blooms, soft and tender at first, and then harder. Deeper. Lips that press against teeth and demand surrender. A mouth that swallows his breath and the soft broken sounds he makes. Orsino feels Hawke beneath him, the hard length of him as though it was made of heat alone. They shift, pressing closer. A leg slots between his, rocking. And when Hawke gets a hand on his cock he forgets to think. He forgets how to breathe. He forgets how to do anything else but _feel_ that strange mix of elation and dread and he's bucking to Hawke's palm and it's ––

 _“Fuck.”_ Hawke says, abruptly letting go. “This is what I mean. You’re going to bleed to death in Darktown because I cannot keep my fucking hands off of you.”

“Worth it,” Orsino says.

Hawke makes a surprised bark of laughter, but firmly disentangles himself so they are sitting once again side-by-side on the bed. He presses a fold of his shirt against Orsino’s wound which has indeed worked itself open, fresh blood soaks through the fine linen. “Tell me what I should do," he asks wearily.

 _Touch me._ Orsino thinks, but “Tell me a story,” he manages.

“A story?” Hawke raises his brows. “About what?”

“Happy endings.”

“Happy endings…” Hawke repeats numbly, and scrubs a hand through his hair. “Maker what are those?” He stares at the tangle of armor on the floor –– leather and steel, spotted and streaked with blood.

It is not a day for happy endings.

_Old fool._

Orsino opens his mouth to excuse his impulsive request when Hawke speaks again.

“You know, my sister was a mage.”

Orsino blinks in surprise, heart constricting in a painful stutter, and wonders if his sympathy resides more in the word _was_ or the word _mage,_ or the way Hawke’s brown eyes cloud with a sudden, bottomless misery.

“Mother got one of each. A rogue. A mage. A warrior. In that order.” He makes a sound that’s as much of a laugh as Orsino’s ever heard from him, though it lacks the essential element of humor. “A perfect, matched set.” Hawke takes Orsino’s hand, almost unconsciously, and knits their fingers together so deftly it is as though they have done this a thousand times before. “But _apostate_ is such a big word for such a small family.”

Orsino understands. He’d never set a foot outside his own circle from the day he was taken, until the day he became Senior Enchanter, yet that word and all it’s terrible implications had cast a long, dark shadow across his own life. “Did you run?” He asks. It was what he knows of apostates.

“No,” Hawke shakes his head. “Not usually, anyway. Hid. In plain sight. Amaranthine at first, and then eventually Lothering. My sister learned to smile at templars and keep her magic on a short leash. I learned to cause the sort of trouble that gets attention –– hard to notice the sister standing quietly behind the troublemaker. And Carver learned to swing a bloody big sword, and not to let anything touch Bethany. But then came the Blight. And then yes, we _ran._

“But if the Hawke’s are bad at anything, it’s running away.” His hand clenches painfully around Orsino's, but neither of them let go. _“Tact,”_ he concedes with a wry sound. “I suppose we've no great talent for tact. Bethany was mother in miniature, sweet and diplomatic enough but _Maker,_ they’d tongue-lashing down to an _art._ And Carver…” Hawke shakes his head, jaw clenching. “We were overtaken by darkspawn on the road, and Carver… well Carver was never going to let anything touch Bethany, the great heroic bastard. He was always better than me at that.

“We were three when we reached Kirkwall. Plus Aveline. Plus Uncle Gamlen too I suppose.” He makes a face. “You haven't met Gamlen, and you wouldn't want to. Six-foot pain in my arse. He’s probably still alive though, unless the Rose has burned down.

“I lost Bethany to the deep roads before ever I met you. I lost my mother to the rot of Kirkwall some years after." He shrugs, the broad expanse of his shoulders shifting uneasily. "The rest, I suppose you know.”

Orsino squeezes Hawe’s hand wistfully. Hawke's life has been full of loss, yes. But also love. Family. Those willing to sacrifice to hold on to each other. Things Orsino himself has never had.

Hawke shakes his head. “I'm sorry. You wanted happy.”

“The world is a difficult place, Hawke. But the story of a man who raised himself from nothing. A man who grew to be kind, and just, though the world had never been kind, or just to him. The story of a Champion. A hero. A… a friend. I am well content.”

“No one has ever accused me of being kind.” Hawke says in a low voice. “But _this,”_ He bends his head, and drops a kiss to Orsino’s bare shoulder, “is the happiest ending I’ll ever get.”

 

*******

 

Leaving Kirkwall is not without its difficulties.

The fighting has mostly stopped, and the fires are mostly out, but the none of the bodies have been cleared away. And though Hawke keeps Orsino –– cloaked and hooded, an auburn dye combed carefully through his silver hair –– as far from the Gallows as he can, he cannot shield him from the smell of the place, and in the end has to bodily tackle the former First Enchanter to stop him storming the ruins. He’d only managed to secure a single mount, and cursed the Carta and the tiny fortune even that had cost him –– should have collected horses instead of swords –– but it had been blessing in the end. Orsino had no notion of how to ride, had never sat a horse, had never been allowed _near_ a horse. So he perches rigidly behind Hawke, wrapped in a grief so ferocious it had only made Hawke want to ride back to Kirkwall and burn the rest of the city to the fucking ground.

(He _had_ offered.)

Rootlessness is no great concern for Hawke. He’s spent half his days drifting from one place to another. Even Kirkwall, for all the time he’d spent there, was never _home._ But the entirety of Orsino’s life has been spent in the alienage of his birth, or the city of Kirkwall. Not _home_ either, but it is all he has ever known. Like a sailor who walks off-kilter on land, Orsino has yet no footing for freedom. The skills that kept him alive in the Circle, like being able to tell which templars were on half-rations (or double rations) of lyrium by the sound of their footfalls; like knowing all the creaky floorboards and slippery steps in the Gallows, even in the dead of night; like knowing which Mages were too pretty or fragile for this world, and keeping a safe distance  –– are of little use now. Not here in a world with no ceilings or walls or Templars or Circles.

But he learns.

Orsino catches raindrops on his tongue for the first time. He makes love under the stars for the first time. He jumps naked into a river for the first time. (And like the thin-skinned city-dweller he is, promptly jumps out again. If the circle had an abundance of anything, it was warm water.) But the bottomless yearning on Orsino’s face when he sees a forest for the first time –– miles of tangled green, and trees that arch up to the sky –– makes Hawke certain of one thing: _firsts_ are not solely Orsino’s domain. Hawke has fallen in love for the very first time.

And that, is how the story ends.

 

*

**Author's Note:**

> From hobbitdragon's original prompt: I'd love a happy ending for Orsino. The whole Harvester thing is clearly something Varric made up to protect Orsino, so write from the assumption that it never happened. With that out of the way, tell me how Hawke and Orsino end up together, and what their relationship is like.
> 
> Honestly, the hardest part about this fic was picking which of hobbitdragon's 5 prompts to do, they were all SO amazing.
> 
> ***
> 
> I feel like Hawke and Orsino would spend months tip-toeing towards each other, and then in the wake of the fall of Kirkwall, just crash into each other had a very high rate of speed. There was supposed to be sex. I had planned for sex. Let's just assume that Orsino got a mind-blowingly good handjob (oh the terrible pun) sometime that first night, and that neither make any formal declaration of their feelings because, let's face it, they're both rather problematic about saying things out loud. <3 <3 <3 <3


End file.
